


War Stories

by lit_chick08



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Mentions of the Holocaust, Not Canon Compliant, Racism, Vignettes, post-partum depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:36:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_chick08/pseuds/lit_chick08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes of Peggy, Howard, and the gang after "Captain America: The First Avenger" but prior to "Iron Man"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rome, 1946

Somehow Peggy always knew when it happened it would be like this (and she always knew it would happen no matter how many times she swore to herself it wouldn’t.) If it was Steve, it would have been loving, slow, a dance. She imagines there would have been candles, kissing, soft smiles as they undressed each other. It would have been the sort of encounter she whispered about with her friends when they were in boarding school imagining what it would be like with their men someday.

But this is Howard, and so it is none of those things. This is fast and desperate, more fight than anything else, and Peggy will be ashamed when her heart is pumping so loud to find this is more to her tastes. She has always been addicted to adrenaline, to the rush of doing what she shouldn’t be doing, and apparently that extends to Howard Stark.

They are only in the flat in Italy for twelve hours. Dugan and Morita will be extracting them just before dawn, and as Howard pushes her against the wall of the bedroom, she reminds herself he isn’t even supposed to be here. Howard is the brains, not the brawn, but they needed him to crack the safe holding Hydra secrets while she distracted the agents. She only needed to be strong for twelve hours.

And instead she’s fisting her hands in Howard’s hair, catching his lower lip between her teeth and smiling when Howard hisses in pain.

She gasps when he grabs the back of her thighs, lifting her off of her feet. He isn’t a big man, not like Steve, and she hadn’t expected this. Howard seems to know this because he smirks and then spins, dropping her onto the bed.

"You’re a pain in the ass, pal," he quips, pulling her towards the end of the mattress as he drops to his knees.

"Howard," she manages as he pushes up her skirt and hooks his fingers into her underwear, dragging them down her thighs but leaving her garters and stockings untouched. 

Peggy doesn’t mean to shout when he puts his mouth on her, but she cannot help it. It’s been years since she’s been with anyone like this, not since that British intelligence officer in ‘43. Beyond a few stolen kisses with Steve, there’s been no one but her hand, and the feel of Howard’s tongue working against her is almost more than she can take.

It just figures he’s good at _this_ too.

His right arm is hooked around her left thigh, his left arm stretched across her stomach to keep her still each time she bucks against him. She swears she can feel him smiling against her, and when she regains her senses, she promises to punch him.

But in the meantime she reaches down to bury her fingers in his hair and hold him against her.

Peggy moans as he slips two fingers inside her, his tongue gliding up the center of her before suckling at her clit. When she begins to work herself against his mouth, Howard groans in appreciation, and Peggy knows this isn’t going to be the only time.

"God, Pegs," he pants, pressing a kiss to the sensitive skin of her inner thigh just above her stocking. "You’re going to be the death of me."

"Me?" she gasps, twisting her fingers in his hair. "Are you kidding?"

Howard laughs before returning to his task, and Peggy feels her pleasure building. When it breaks, she forgets how to breathe for a moment, and then she cries out, melting limply into the mattress.

"You’re a bastard," Peggy manages when she can speak again.

Howard drops beside her on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. ”You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

She snorts. ”Probably not.”

As the sounds of the city street filter in from the open windows, Peggy’s eyes drift shut. She feels Howard’s hand rest atop hers, and she takes it, entwining their fingers. 

Peggy has no idea what the hell is going on between her and Howard, but she knows it’s going to end in disaster.

But as she falls asleep beside him in their rented room, Peggy doesn’t care.


	2. Jamaica, 1946

Sometimes when she is in SHIELD debriefs, Peggy feels like Wendy Darling trying to gather the Lost Boys. Many of the agents she works with were Howling Commandos, and they know her worth. But when they are not in the field, when they are safe in the office and discussing what comes next, she feels more like their mother than their peer. She thought that was the worst it could be but this, this is worse. Now they're looking at her with _pity_ , like she's some porcelain doll that fell off the shelf.

Her right arm is in a sling, her shoulder separated; her left eye is swollen shut, her bottom lip split in several places, and several ribs are broken. She moves slowly, every movement causing immense pain, and when Dugan pulls her chair out for her, she wishes she had the strength to pick it up and break it over his head.

Instead she sits down and explains to the assembled group that the doctor will not clear her to return to the field for six weeks.

"Try not to get into too much trouble while I'm gone, boys," she tries to joke before letting Jarvis take her home, helping her up the flights of stairs to her shared apartment.

She tells Dottie and Angie she was in a car accident, and they cluck over her in a way Peggy's own mother never would. Peggy knows she's not herself when her mother calls to harangue her about never visiting and she considers flying to England to see her. Two weeks into her convalescence she is going out of her mind, sharing supper with Dottie and Angie. They are trying to convince her to have dinner with Dottie's brother when she's feeling better, and Peggy is just about out of excuses as to why she can't when someone knocks on the door.

"You expecting someone?" Angie asks as she comes around the table.

"Everyone I know is here," Peggy drawls.

It isn't strictly true, which Peggy realizes when Howard slips in the door past a stunned Angie, pushing the door closed behind him. He carries a bottle of wine in one hand and a collection of papers in the other, looking just as handsome as he had a month earlier when she last saw him. Both Angie and Dottie look at him with wide eyes, and Peggy already anticipates the questions this visit will raise.

"Of all the women's boarding houses I've snuck into, this one might be the hardest," he declares with an easygoing smile. "I think the owner may have worked for the Third Reich."

Angie and Dottie both giggle, and Peggy rolls her eyes. "Dottie, Angie, this is Howard Stark. Howard, Dottie, Angie."

"Peggy never mentioned she knew Howard Stark," Angie says with a flutter of eyelashes.

"You ashamed of me, pal?" he quips, dropping into the chair beside her. 

"Of course I am." She winces at a twinge in her still healing ribs. "Ladies, would you mind if we finished our dinner another night?"

On another night the way they trip over themselves to leave her alone with Howard would make Peggy laugh, but laughter still hurts too much. She watches as Howard rummages through her drawers until he finds a corkscrew, opening the bottle of wine he brought and pouring it into two juice classes he finds in a cupboard.

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting you," Howard answers as if it the most obvious thing in the world. He sets the papers on the table, and Peggy sees they are brochures for various destinations around the world. She looks at him in confusion as he fans the brochures out, accepting the proffered glass of wine. "Pick one."

"For what?"

"For vacation. You still have a month off to heal, and it's been too long since I've relaxed."

"You never relax."

"Well, I can certainly work on a beach with a drink in my hand."

"Howard - "

"Peggy." She freezes, startled by Howard using her actual name. "Let's go somewhere."

She picks Jamaica more to shut him up than anything else, and Howard flies them in his private plane. When they arrive at his beach house - and why she is surprised to find he owns a beach house in Jamaica, Peggy isn't sure - she opens the suitcase Jarvis gave her to find nothing but sundresses and bikinis. Howard just smiles when she questions him about it, and though she is still a mangled, bruised mess, she cannot deny it is relaxing to do nothing but lie on the beach and drink.

"I may never go back," Peggy tells him during the second week of their trip. She is stretched out on a lounge chair, a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose, a Fitzgerald novel on her lap. 

Howard, who sits at a small table in nothing but swim trunks while writing in a notebook, smiles. "We both know you love your work too much for that."

"Says the man who hasn't stopped working since we got here."

"I don't want to lose an idea."

"Weapon?"

"No, something a little more useful." He sets down his pen and sighs. "I thought I might try using my brain for something good for once."

"Have you ever considered the problem may be you use your brain _too_ much?"

"Jarvis has suggested it." He gets too his feet, picking up the cigarette case on the table beside Peggy. She moves over a bit to make room for him, and they sit, sharing the cigarette. Peggy has just stubbed it out in the ashtray when Howard blurts out, "I'm sorry for sending you on that mission."

Peggy blinks in surprise. "You couldn't have known."

"But I should have."

"You've sent me on dozens of missions, Howard, and it's never happened before."

"Pegs - "

"Morita got his leg broken the last time, and you didn't take him to the tropics."

"It's different."

"How?"

Howard winces, staring out at the ocean. "You know how."

Peggy sighs, using her good arm to push hair off of her forehead. Finally she says, "I don't blame you for what happened, and I don't want you to blame yourself either. I got the beating of my life because sometimes the other guy is bigger. I'm not invincible, Howard. I'll come back bruised and broken sometimes, but I'll come back."

"If Dugan hadn't have gotten there when he did, you might not have."

"And that's the risks I signed up for. How many chances have we taken since we met? How many missions have we gone on that went sideways and we still managed to return unscathed? It won't always happen that way. But I lived, and we'll go on. You don't have to sweep me away to make up for it."

He nods, slowly exhaling before brushing a soft kiss against her forehead. "You scared the hell out of me, pal. Don't do it again."

"I'll try my best."

They don't sleep together on the trip, which surprises Peggy. It's been months since Rome, and neither of them have mentioned what happened in the safe house that afternoon. On the last night in Jamaica she finds herself almost disappointed Howard hasn't made a move on her, but as they sit in the sand staring out at the sea in silence, Peggy realizes this might just be better.

Somehow Howard Stark has become her best friend, and she has no idea what to do with that.


	3. Camp X, 1941

She is the only woman in the first training class. Normally this doesn't bother her; she is used to being the only woman in the room. But the men have taken to referring to her only by the crassest of nicknames and tossing around disgusting things she's being "trained" to do, and if the Germans don't kill these bastards, Peggy Carter may just do it herself.

Things are especially tense now that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. The Americans are sending more men to be trained, and they all look alike. She thinks about her girlfriends back in England, how they all used to sigh over American men in films, and she thinks about writing them letters to say just how utterly forgettable these American men are. Not that she's gone to war to find herself a man, though that _is_ what her mother suggested when she enlisted.

"Honestly, Margaret, you're a beautiful, intelligent girl from a distinguished family," Evelyn Carter said when she learned of Peggy's enlistment from Peggy's younger brother. "Why do you insist on doing this?" She sighed, motioning for the maid to take her plate. "You had better get a husband out of this nonsense or else you'll die an old maid."

Given the options available to her, "old maid" doesn't seem so bad.

She eats alone in the mess. After the first day when she stabbed a RAF pilot in the hand with her fork, the men gave her a wide berth. Peggy carries her tray to the small table near the back of the room, trying to figure out what exactly they're trying to pass off as food today. She is in the middle of sawing through the toughest piece of meat she's ever had when someone plops into the seat across from her, dropping his tray with a clang.

He doesn't wear a uniform. The stranger wears slacks and shirtsleeves, and Peggy's been around enough well-bred boys to know the clothes are expensive. His black hair is slicked back against his head, and a unlit cigarette dangles from his mouth.

"I don't know what's worse up here, the food or the cigarettes." He removes the cigarette from his mouth, pulling a lighter from his pocket. As it lights, he inhales hard on it, wrinkling his nose. "If you tell me there's no decent booze, I might have to pack up and go home right now."

"Can I help you?"

His smile is wide and friendly. "Love the accent. Sounds much less pissy than your fellow countrymen." He extends his hand. "I'm Howard Stark."

Peggy takes his hand. "The businessman?"

"Scientist who happens to sell things," he corrects, wrinkling his nose as he stubs out his bad cigarette. "Christ, that's awful."

"Yes, you mentioned that."

His smile becomes a smirk. "Are you going to introduce yourself or..."

"Agent Carter from the Strategic Scientific Reserve." 

"Is that what your friends call you?"

"Why would it matter?"

"Well if we're going to be friends, 'Agent Carter from the Strategic Scientific Reserve' is sort of a mouthful."

"Haven't the others told you? I'm no one's friend."

"I haven't talked to the others." Dropping his voice to a stage whisper, he divulges, "They're assholes."

Peggy laughs despite herself. She waits for him to make a comment, attempt to hit on her, but when he only talks about the inedible food, Peggy starts to relax. When they have finished their meals, getting up to dump their trays, Peggy reaches into her pocket and removes her cigarette case. 

"Here," she says, depositing a few cigarettes in his palm. "My brother sends them to me from England. If you're going to help us win the war, you shouldn't smoke the shit here."

Howard grins, immediately putting one of the cigarettes in his mouth. As he lights it, the flame of the lighter casting a bit of light on his handsome face, he says, "Pegs, I think you and I are going to be pals."


	4. New York, 1950-1953

It isn't as if she hasn't been expecting it. They've been dating for over a year now, and things are serious. Well, as serious as Peggy ever lets them get. They go to dinners, they see movies, they accompany each other to the various weddings of their friends and family members, and they both pretend they don't notice the looks people give them. Gabe is intelligent and handsome with a dry sense of humor; he never asks her to stop working at SHIELD or considers his work more important than hers. Theirs is a partnership, as true as any Peggy is likely to find, and she is happy.

But even with all that, when Gabe opens the box to reveal a modest but attractive diamond ring, Peggy's heart stops.

"I love you," Gabe says, "and I want to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?"

A thousand things run through her mind in that moment. She thinks of Steve and the life they will never have together. She thinks of Colleen and her bouncing baby boy Peggy held only last week. She thinks of her baby brother, already engaged and set to wed next year. She thinks of her mother, who wants her to wed more than anything but will never approve of having a black son-in-law. And she thinks of Howard, who hasn't spoken a word to her since he learned of her relationship with Gabe.

"Yes," she manages, surprised by the tears that well in her eyes. "Yes, of course."

Her mother reacts exactly how Peggy suspected she would, refusing to come to the wedding and forbidding Hal from coming. Peggy assures her little brother it is fine, knowing how he has never been able to say no to their mother, and her stepfather sends her a brief letter with a check enclosed for a small fortune. She announces her intention to burn it, but Gabe stops her, insisting Clarence sent it with goodwill.

The Howling Commandos throw them an engagement party so rowdy, the police come and request they keep the noise at a reasonable level. They all laugh and raise their glasses and swap stories, and for once none of them mention Steve. The closest anyone gets is Dugan's inclusion of Barnes in a story, but even that is enough to make Peggy shoot an anxious glance at Gabe to see if he has noticed. Though they do not keep secrets from each other, they also do not discuss Steve. Peggy knows Gabe doesn't ask questions or bring him up because he doesn't want to risk hurting her, but it isn't that it hurts her to think of Steve. The constant question of what might have been, that hurts, but the mere mention of Steve doesn't do it. 

So many years removed from his death now, Peggy can admit she and Steve didn't really know each other. They'd never really gotten the chance. There are people now who know her better, people _she_ knows better. And the fact that one of those people is not here celebrating with them hurts Peggy far more than the absence of Steve Rogers.

Gabe is an only child, and his parents are gone; with her family boycotting the wedding, Peggy sees no need to have a grand affair. They are wed by a justice-of-the-peace with the Commandos and their wives, a few friends, and Jarvis as witnesses. Colleen offers to host a reception dinner, and it is only as dinner is winding down, Jarvis takes her aside, embraces her firmly, and murmurs, "He'll get over this."

She doesn't want to think about how damned disappointing Howard Stark is on her wedding day, so she shrugs it off, kisses Jarvis's cheek, and thanks him for coming.

They cannot afford a honeymoon, and both she and Gabe agree they've seen enough of the world. Instead they use Clarence's money to purchase a home outside the city, the sort of house in which they can raise a family. None of the neighbors introduce themselves. A week after they move in, someone paints a slur on their garage door. The second week, someone slashes the tires on Peggy's car.

"Bloody assholes!" she finds herself screaming when she discovers it, startling the men heading off for their daily commute.

When the doctor tells her she's pregnant, Peggy insists on moving back into the city. Gabe smirks at her from behind the steering wheel, navigating their car onto the street their neighbors want to make sure they know they're not welcome on.

"You think people won't hate us in the city?"

"Fuck people," she replies, "but I don't want our child growing up with shit painted on his house."

"You think I want that?" Gabe shakes his head, pulling into their driveway. "I'm just saying, Peggy, that ignorant assholes are everywhere. We knew it was going to be tough."

He caves during the fifth month of her pregnancy. They use the profits from selling their house and what's left of Clarence's money to buy a brownstone in Brooklyn. The neighbors still don't talk to them, but no one scribbles obscenities on their door. When they bring Adelaide home from the hospital, Gabe puts flowers in every room and invites Colleen and her family to visit.

"She's the most perfect thing I've ever seen," Colleen declares as she cradles Adelaide in her arms. "Isn't she, Jim?"

Jim nods, and Peggy bites her lip to keep from smiling. She thinks Jim would agree to anything so long as Colleen asked him to do it. 

"Then it's decided. She's just going to have to marry our Andrew."

Gabe laughs. "Shouldn't we wait until she's a month old before we marry her off?"

"We're not marrying her off," Colleen corrects. "It's more like a very long-term engagement." She leans in, dropping a kiss on the tip of Adelaide's nose. "What do you say, Adelaide? Do you want to be Mrs. Andrew Triplett?"

The fighting starts when she goes back to work. Peggy has always been in the field, and she can't stand sitting at her desk all day doing paperwork. Gabe hates that she comes home at all hours, covered in bumps and bruises. Where once he understood, now he keeps reminding her, "You're someone's mother now, Peggy. You have a reason to come home."

Someone comes to interview her about the war, about Steve. She sits on their couch and tells lovely, sanitized stories about Captain America because she learned long ago people wanted stories about the Captain, not Steve Rogers. Gabe sits behind the camera, Adelaide in his arms, and after the camera crew leaves, they don't talk about it.

Peggy doesn't know when they stopped talking, but the day after Adelaide's second birthday party, she realizes the only thing she and Gabe ever talk about anymore is Adelaide.

"You're not going to divorce him, are you?" Colleen asks when they take the kids to the park, Andrew and Adelaide playing in the sandbox. 

"No. I don't know." Peggy sighs. "It's like we've become different people so quickly, I don't even know how we got here."

"Do you still love him?"

"Of course I do. He's Adelaide's father."

"But do you love him as your husband? Do you want to jump him when he gets home at night?"

Peggy chuckles despite herself. "To tell the truth, I can't even remember the last time we jumped each other."

"Oh, Pegs, that's a problem."

She doesn't tell Colleen the truth: that she loves Gabe and Adelaide but feels trapped by them, that sometimes when she's on a mission she imagines disappearing into another identity, that she fears there is something wrong with her in that she feels fundamentally unhappy when she has everything she's supposed to want. 

She doesn't tell Gabe either. She stops telling Gabe anything. She starts sleeping in Adelaide's room.

Peggy comes home from work three years into her marriage to find Gabe waiting for her, Adelaide spending the night with Colleen. Before she even sits down, Peggy knows what he is going to say and she hates how relieved she is to know she will not have to do it herself.

"You don't want to be married," Gabe says, matter-of-fact as ever, "and I don't want to be unhappy. I don't want Adelaide growing up seeing us like this."

"I don't either." She scrubs at her face for a moment before confessing, "I wish I could love you better."

"I think you fell in love a long time ago, Pegs, and I don't know that there's enough room left in your heart for anyone else."

"Is that what you think, that I still love Steve so much that we couldn't work?"

Gabe shakes his head, his mouth twisting into a bitter smile. "I didn't say it was Steve."

It is the most amicable of divorces. Peggy lets him keep the brownstone, renting a small apartment in Manhattan; they both agree it is best for Adelaide to remain with him as his work hours are consistent with Peggy having custody on the weekends. Gabe assures her she is welcome to visit as often as she likes, and Peggy does just that. She and Gabe start talking again, separation and divorce healing their relationship in a way she thought impossible. Somehow Gabe has become her friend again, and Peggy is glad Adelaide gets to see that.

When Howard appears at her door two months after the divorce with a bottle of champagne in his hand, Peggy wants to scream, to swear, to curse him for abandoning her because he was a jealous child and to punch him for returning because she is single once again. She wants to tell Howard Stark he is the most selfish, terrible man she has ever known and she hopes he chokes.

Instead she opens her door wider, steps aside, and lets Howard back into her life.


	5. London, 1948

The moment she arrives home, Peggy knows it was a mistake. She should have stayed in her tiny apartment and gone to Christmas supper at Colleen's new place or finally taken up Dugan's wife on her offer to spend the holidays with them. Even the uncomfortable set-up Peggy was certain Mrs. Dugan had planned was better than what awaited her at the family home.

Despite explicit instructions not to send him, Jasper is waiting at the curb, the latest of her mother's shiny cars idling there. He grins at the sight of her, offering a proper, "Welcome home, Miss Margaret," before Peggy drops all propriety and embraces him. She'd spent more time with their family's valet than anyone else as a child, and it was the memories of Jasper that made her trust Jarvis.

"Tell me about America," Jasper requests as he navigates the car through the bustling streets, and Peggy obeys, telling humorous stories about New York and its inhabitants.

No one is home when she gets there, only reaffirming Peggy's belief that Jasper is the only one actually happy to see her. She supposes she can't blame Hal; he's on his way home from Eton, due to arrive by dinner. Clarence, Jasper reports, is at the office, doing whatever it is stockbrokers do, which so far as Peggy has been able to tell from observing her stepfather involves drinking copious amounts of Scotch and coming home reeking of tobacco. And her mother, the Lady Danvers, was at some charity fundraiser that Peggy knew, had she arrived a day earlier, she'd have been dragged to and forced to hear a dozen times, "Oh, I always forget Evelyn has a daughter."

Her bedroom has been redecorated since her last visit just after the war ended, and Peggy knows it will be different the next time she comes. The amount of money her mother has spent redecorating rooms in the house could finance a year's operating budget at SHIELD. She unpacks her clothes and arranges her toiletries on the counter of her bathroom sink, knowing if she didn't the maids will do it. The maids are new too; Jasper is the only constant in the household, and that is because he is the only one Clarence puts his foot down about firing.

The phone sits on her bedside table, and Peggy picks it up and dials without really thinking about it. It rings twice before a husky, sleep roughened voice growls, "This better be good."

"Why did I come here?"

"I told you not to," Howard answers, voice slightly less gruff. "If you'd listened to me, we could be on a beach in Hawaii right now."

"Is it too late to change my mind?"

Howard is quiet for a minute and she hears rustling in the background. "Something happen, pal?"

"I just don't like being here." Peggy sighs, leaning back against her headboard. "I feel like I'm sixteen again."

His suggestive chuckle floats across the lines. "Tell me more about this, particularly what your school uniform looked like."

Peggy laughs despite herself. "You are a pig."

"I never claimed to be anything other."

Hearing the front door open and close, her mother's voice calling for one of the maids, Peggy sighs. "I need to go. Sorry for waking you. Happy Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Pegs."

* * *

"I see American food is agreeing with you."

Peggy's smile is brittle. "Hello, Mother."

Evelyn Danvers hands the maid her coat, and Peggy smiles as she sees Hal enter behind her. Unlike their mother, he takes three long strides and throws his gangly arms around Peggy, attempting to lift her off her feet. Peggy laughs, genuinely happy to see her little brother. They do not look a thing alike, her and Hal; he looks more like their mother than anything, all pale skin and thinning blond hair, whereas Peggy favors their father. Or at least that's what the photographs say. Peggy does not really remember their father, and their mother was pregnant with Hal when he passed.

Passed. That is the pleasant euphemism they all use for what Harold Carter the III did to himself.

"Thank god you're here," Hal declares as they hide in his room, Peggy helping him unpack his suitcase. "It's bloody insufferable since you've gone."

"I've been gone longer than I've been here."

"And I've hated every moment." He leans in, dropping his voice. "Can you keep a secret, Peg?"

She cannot help but grin. "I've been told I can."

"I'm not going to Oxford. Clarence is helping me to arrange it. I'm going to America."

"You are?"

He nods. "Harvard. Clarence has a friend there; he's helping me to get in."

"Mother doesn't know?"

"Clarence isn't dead, is he?"

Peggy shrugs, understanding what sort of fight will transpire between their mother and stepfather when she learns of Hal's defection. Evelyn has always preferred compliant Hal to her, and Peggy can't help but revel in Hal's rebellion. "Massachusetts isn't so far from New York. I'll have to come visit you and vice versa."

"You won't mind?"

"Of course not."

Dinner is, as always, a formal occasion. Peggy takes her seat across from Hal, Clarence at the head of the table, Evelyn opposite him. The servants scurry about as quickly and silently as possible in hopes of not angering Lady Danvers, and it makes Peggy long for her crappy kitchen table and a sandwich from the deli near her apartment.

"Do you enjoy your work, Margaret?" Clarence asks after Hal is forced to recount every detail of his time at Eton since his last visit, his voice as dry as the roast they eat.

"Yes, the phone company provides me with an interesting day."

Evelyn clucks her tongue, a sound that instinctively makes Peggy flinch. "All your education and breeding, and you're wasting it playing secretary like a common girl."

"I like working, Mother."

"You wouldn't _need_ to work if you'd marry. Muriel Foster's son is available."

"Muriel Foster's son would be more interested in Hal than me."

"Margaret!" Evelyn snaps as Hal turns a laugh into a cough, using his napkin to cover his mouth.

"A woman doesn't have to marry nowadays."

"Oh, spare us more of your suffragette talk, Margaret." Evelyn takes a sip of her wine. "You know, your trust will not become available to you until you marry."

Oh, the trust. Peggy had heard about little else since her introduction to society. Though her father did not have near Clarence's wealth, Harold Carter hadn't been a poor man either. Both she and Hal were substantially cared for in his will, and while Hal could receive his money upon turning twenty-five, hers could only be accessed upon marriage. Peggy wished the damned thing didn't even exist.

"Perhaps I'll become a spinster," Peggy says, picking up her own wine. She knows she is baiting her mother, something she is too old to do, but she cannot help it. Like she told Howard, she feels like a child again. "I shall live in an apartment and own cats."

She sees both Hal and Clarence hide smiles as Evelyn huffs, "Honestly, Margaret, I wouldn't wish you on a man."

* * *

She and Hal are playing chess, Clarence reading the paper in his stiff wing back chair while Evelyn writes a letter at the desk, when Jasper enters the den and announces, "Miss Margaret, you have a visitor."

Peggy frowns. "No one knows I'm here."

The corner of Jasper's mouth twitches as if resisting smiling. "Apparently someone does."

Hal gets to his feet, a mischievous smile on his face. "Well, come on, Peg, let's meet your mystery visitor."

She is entirely too old to be chasing her little brother through the house, but that is just what Peggy ends up doing, Jasper following behind them, Evelyn calling for them to behave. When they reach the entryway, Peggy recognizes the back of the man examining a portrait of some Danvers ancestor at once, and she isn't sure whether to laugh at his appearance or cry because he came.

"Hello!" Hal calls as they both come to a stop.

Howard turns with the same easy grace he always moves with and offers the smile most recently featured on the cover of _Life_ magazine. "Hey, pal."

"Hey," Peggy manages, trying to squirm under Hal's inquisitive sideways glance. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in the neighborhood."

"I know geography wasn't my best subject, but I don't believe California is near London."

"I'm investing in a company over here. I thought I'd stop in."

"What company?"

Howard leans towards Hal and quips, "So suspicious, hmm?" When Hal smiles in confusion, he extends his hand. "Howard Stark. I know you won't believe it, but I'm a friend of Peggy's."

"Hal Carter, Peggy's brother."

"Nice to meet you, Hal." Howard looks at her, and for the first time Peggy sees a flash of uncertainty in his dark eyes. "Should I go?"

Peggy cannot help but melt a bit. She shakes her head and takes a step forward, wrapping her arms around him. Howard squeezes her close and whispers against her ear, "I'm here, pal," and Peggy knows in that moment she may be more than a little in love with Howard Stark.


	6. New Jersey, 1960

"Why are you taking me to New Jersey for supper?"

Jarvis doesn't look away from the road, calming navigating his way to their exit. "Because there's a restaurant there I think you'll like."

"Thank goodness because there are no restaurants in New York."

"You know, the proper response to someone taking you out for your birthday is to say thank you."

"My birthday isn't until next week." Crossing her arms across her chest, she adds, "And I hardly see reason to celebrate."

"Don't tell me you're going to turn into one of those women who frets about her age. I'd have thought you beyond that."

Peggy snorts. "What, because I work rather than stay home, I'm not allowed to indulge in some vanity?"

"You look the same today as you do the day I met you. No one would think you're forty."

She half-heartedly slaps his shoulder with the back of her hand. "I'm still thirty-nine, thank you very much. And I _feel_ old. The new agents, they're half my age. I swear, I trained a girl today that looked barely older than Adelaide."

"Espionage seems to be a young man or woman's game, but I cannot imagine you're ready to hang up your gun quite yet."

Peggy laughs, looking out the window at the passing New Jersey landscape. "My mother would die from happiness. I wouldn't even know what to do with myself. I talk to Colleen, her days are full of all the things I can hardly manage to do. I'd go mad within a week. Though I would like to spend more time with the girls," she admits. "I always worry about that."

"You're a wonderful mother."

"I'm not, but thank you for saying that." Peggy sighs. "Gabe's new wife, she spends far more time with Adelaide than I do, and when I have her on the weekends, it always feels like we're starting over again. And Victoria...She thinks of Hal and Monica as her parents, and maybe that's for the best."

"You've become quite introspective in your old age."

Peggy bursts out laughing, covertly wiping a tear form the corner of her eye. "Oh, Jarvis, what would I ever do without you?"

Pulling into a parking space outside a restaurant, he shrugs. "Likely have to drive yourself places."

She links her arm through Jarvis's as they approach the restaurant, smiling as he opens the door for her. They are a handful of steps into the restaurant when a roar of, "Surprise!" explodes, causing Peggy to start. Standing among the tables is Gabe, his wife, Adelaide, Colleen and her family, friends from SHIELD, Hal and Monica with Victoria in her arms, a few of the Commandos. As they all begin to sing "Happy Birthday," Peggy turns to see Howard coming out of the kitchen, a large cake in his arms ablaze with forty candles.

"I'm going to kill you," she murmurs to Jarvis, who kisses her cheek.

"Wait until after the party."

As Howard sets the cake down on a nearby table, Peggy waves Adelaide over to help with the candles. Together they blow them all out, the assembled guests clapping, and Peggy forces a bright smile as she squeezes Adelaide to her.

"Were you surprised, Mommy?"

"Very. Was this your idea?"

Adelaide nods excitedly, her smile so bright and wide, it reminds Peggy of Gabe's at once. "I told Daddy and he told me to tell Uncle Hal. Then Uncle Hal called Mr. Stark and he helped us plan it. Mr. Jarvis's job was to get you here. That was Mr. Stark's idea."

Peggy fixes her eyes on Howard, who just smirks. "Was it?"

"Ah, c'mon, Pegs, we couldn't let such a momentous occasion pass without a celebration." Howard leans forward, brushing a kiss against Peggy's cheek. "Happy birthday, pal."

She hasn't seen Howard outside the office in six months, not since Victoria's first birthday when he showed up at her apartment stinking drunk and apologetic at one o'clock in the morning, twelve hours after the party Monica threw at their house in Westchester. Peggy refused to let him inside then, calling him so many names, she lost track, years of frustration boiling over. The last thing she expected was for him to throw her a birthday party.

But then Howard never did what she thought he would.

It's been too long since she's gone out and enjoyed herself. After a few drinks, she finds herself telling war stories with the Commandos, dancing with just about everyone at the party, and doing an uncanny impression of her mother while Hal acted as Clarence. By the time people start to leave, Peggy is sitting at a table, Victoria asleep against her shoulder, Adelaide nodding off on her feet as Gabe and his very pregnant wife come over to say goodbye.

"Happy birthday, Peg," Gabe says, hauling Adelaide up in his arms. "It was a great party."

"Thank you for coming."

"Of course," the new Mrs. Jones says, and Peggy thinks this brings the grand total of words she's said to Peggy to ten. Peggy knows from conversations with Gabe that she doesn't entirely understand the relationship Peggy and Gabe have, and Peggy wants to assure her there is no chance of her and Gabe deciding to make another go of it. 

But she's more than a little tipsy so instead she just says, "Have a safe trip home."

Victoria rouses in her arms, lifting her little head off of Peggy's shoulder, smacking her lips, and then lying back down, a sweet little snore slipping past her lips. Peggy brushes a lock of thick black hair from her forehead and thinks for the hundredth time just how much she looks like Howard.

Hal and Monica come over, holding hands like a couple of teenagers. "Do you want to take her tonight?"

Peggy begins to nod when she sees the look on Monica's face. She knows Monica and Hal cannot have children of their own; it was why Monica was so amenable to helping to care for Victoria during the week while Peggy worked. But as she sees the look of maternal anxiety on Monica's face at the idea of leaving Victoria behind, Peggy finds herself saying, "No, I'm sure she'd much rather sleep in her own bed."

Monica practically springs forward, plucking Victoria from Peggy's arms. Victoria's eyes open for a minute, blinking in confusion, before seeing Monica and murmuring, "Mon," curling up against her. Peggy averts her gaze as Hal brushes a kiss against her cheek, wishing her happy birthday.

This is the price she pays for her choices, Peggy thinks as she watches her sister-in-law carry her daughter out the door. This is the cost of being an agent of SHIELD.

"Are you ready to go?"

Peggy looks up and manages a weak smile for Jarvis. "It seems so."

"I can take her," Howard says, coming up behind Jarvis.

"You're okay to drive?"

Howard smiles. "Haven't had a drop tonight, thank you very much." He clasps Jarvis on the shoulder. "Go home, see that wife of yours."

Jarvis subtly glances between the two of them before nodding. Peggy sighs, getting to her feet, and asks, "Are you really going to drive me home?"

"If you want."

"What's the alternative?"

"I could fly you somewhere."

"And if I say no?"

"There's a hotel upstairs."

Peggy looks at him, trying to gauge his seriousness. When he finally cracks, a smirk forming beneath his mustache, she laughs. "You're a bastard, you know that?"

Howard wraps an arm around her shoulders, the two beginning to walk to the parking lot. "You've told me that before. You've called me a lot worse than that."

"Yeah."

As they step outside the restaurant, Hal drives past them, raising a hand in goodbye, and Peggy feels Howard squeeze her shoulder as she tenses.

"People who do what we do, we're not meant to be parents."

 _But we are_ , Peggy wants to say, the lump in her throat so large, she fears she's going to start to sob.


	7. New York, 1963

President Kennedy is shot, the country is in disarray, and Peggy is trying to gather as much intel as possible on the Winter Soldier when Hal calls the number she gave him to only call in emergencies. When her secretary gives her the message, she thinks Hal likely wants details she cannot give him on President Kennedy's death, but when the second call comes through, Peggy finally calls him back.

"Hal, I can't - "

"Victoria's in the hospital," he cuts in, his voice tense and panicked. "Monica is with her now. It's some sort of respiratory infection turned pneumonia. They're very concerned. Get here."

Peggy immediately searches for the next train or plane into New York, cursing herself for being in DC as if she could've anticipated this, and when she realizes she is going to have to drive there, she calls Hal back to assure him she's coming. Her next call is impulsive, but she dials Howard's number in California. As expected, there's no answer, and she leaves no message with his latest secretary. The final number she calls is answered on the third ring.

"Can I ask you for a monumental favor?"

"Of course," Jarvis replies as if it is the simplest answer in the world.

By the time she reaches the hospital, she is more of a wreck than she'd like to admit. Adelaide has always been remarkably healthy. Except for a single tumble off a slide when she was four, splitting her lip, she's never seen the inside of a hospital. Victoria is only four and small for her age; she and Hal laughed about it all the time, how she was tiny as a pixie.

"Peggy!"

Hal waves to her as she rushes down the hallway, throwing her arms around her little brother. She squeezes him too tight, a small grunt escaping him.

"How is she?"

He shrugs, helpless. "They've connected her to all sorts of monitors and tubings. Her breathing is so constricted. They think maybe she has asthma."

For a wild second she thinks of Steve Rogers when she first met him with his tiny body and wheezing breaths. How many times had she wanted Steve back? Is this the punishment for asking too many times?

"Where's Monica?"

"She called her mother to check in on Charlie, and now he's sick so Monica panicked and rushed home."

Peggy hasn't seen her nephew since his christening shortly after they brought him home from the adoption agency, but right now she can't focus on how she's dropping the ball as an aunt when she's dropping the ball as a mother. "Can I go in?"

Hal nods. "Jarvis is in there with her. He's been reading her books since he arrived."

She exhales in relief. Victoria's adoration of Jarvis is well-known by everyone, Peggy even teasing him that Victoria prefers him to anyone else, and Hal was always grateful to have a fellow Englishman to discuss things with. "Do you want to go home to check on Monica and Charlie? I'll stay with her."

"You won't mind?"

"Of course not. Go. You look like hell."

Victoria is dozing in her bed, Jarvis reading her _Alice in Wonderland_ when she enters. Jarvis doesn't pause his reading even as he sees her approaching the bed, and Peggy mouths "thank you" to him. When she touches Victoria's forehead, her younger daughter rolls her head to see her and smiles. With her sickly pallor and the oxygen mask over her face, it breaks Peggy's heart.

"Hi, Mum," she says as Peggy climbs into bed alongside her, careful of the tubes and machines.

From the moment she could speak, Victoria has called Monica "mama" and Peggy "mum," and Peggy has never been more grateful for it than today. "Hello, sweetheart. I'm sorry I was late."

Victoria doesn't seem to recognize she is late at all as she says, "Jarvis read me Alice."

"Did he?" Peggy smiles at him. "Where are we at?"

"Painting the roses red," Jarvis replies. "Mistress Victoria insists I read to the finish."

"Did she?"

Victoria nods, her dark eyes wide, and Peggy thinks for the hundredth time just how much she looks like Howard. 

"Well then I suppose he must."

She drifts off to sleep an hour later, her breath rough and crackling. Jarvis clears his throat as he marks his place in the book, and Peggy carefully extracts herself from Victoria's bed to walk around and embrace him. He stiffens some and she declares, "I know you hate this, but this deserves a hug."

"It really wasn't anything extraordinary. I care about her a great deal, and it's unfortunate she's in the hospital. Anyone would do the same."

"No, they wouldn't." Peggy shakes her head, emotion rising in her throat. "Howard isn't even here. I can't reach him. He certainly wouldn't have sat at her bedside and read to her for hours."

Jarvis shifts in discomfort. "I know you and Mr. Stark have a complicated situation when it comes to Victoria - "

"You mean how he pretends she doesn't exist?"

He sighs and looks away for a moment. Finally he says, "Anna and I tried for years to have a child of our own. I would have considered it a wonderful gift to be a father. Not all men feel that way. Some day I truly believe Mr. Stark will regret the way he's behaved or not behaved towards his child or children as the case may turn out to be. But in the mean time, I think all the rest of us can do is make certain Victoria feels as loved as possible."

Peggy brushes away a tear as she concedes, "You're right."

"Yes, I know."

She chuckles, wiping away another wave of tears. "You don't need to stay if you want to get home to Anna."

Jarvis shakes his head, sitting back down in his chair. "Should Mistress Victoria wake, she'll want me to finish the book. And I wouldn't want you to get bored here all by yourself. In my experience leaving you to your own devices leads to disaster for all."

Peggy sits in the chair beside him and admits, "You're not entirely wrong."

As they sit in silence at Victoria's bedside, Peggy realizes that of all the people in her life, she is glad Jarvis is the one sitting here beside her.


	8. Long Island, 1968

She finds him in the dining room, far more disheveled than she’s ever seen him, the scent of whiskey seeping from his pores. When he notices her approaching, he gestures to the paperwork in front of him and confesses, “I don’t know what to do.”

Peggy sits beside him and sees it is all paperwork he must have been given at the funeral home. “Did she ever mention what - how - “

"No," Jarvis rasps, rubbing at his eyes. "We thought we still had time."

"Would - Do you think she would have wanted to…go home? Her family - "

"Her family all died in the war," he cuts in, his voice so raw, it sounds as if it’s been sandpapered. "She got her citizenship in ‘49. She wanted to be a real American." Jarvis’s voice breaks, tears overwhelming him, and Peggy’s heart breaks for him. She knows how it feels to lose someone you love, but it would be asinine to compare her brief time with Steve to the twenty-three years Jarvis had with Anna.

Instead she gathers the paperwork and suggests, “Why don’t I make the arrangements? I’m sure I can find things Anna would have liked.”

Jarvis nods, tears still running down his face. “Yes, thank you.”

When Peggy returns from the funeral home, the casket selected, flowers ordered, and the rabbi from Anna’s synagogue prepared to speak, another car is parked in front of the palatial estate. As she climbs out of her car, the front door opens, and Peggy sees Maria standing there, Tony on her hip.

"We came as soon as we heard," Maria says after pressing a kiss to Peggy’s cheek, trying to adjust her grip on a squirming Tony. "Howard is talking to him now, but…Is there anything we can do?"

"I made all the arrangements."

"Well, we’ll pay for it all," Maria declares at once with a wave of her hand. "After all Jarvis has done for us, it’s the least we can do. I just can’t believe this. When we saw her before we left, she was perfectly fine. Hell, she was chasing Tony through the garden."

"The doctors say she could have had the clot forever and it just…broke free." Peggy smiles as Tony lifts his head from his mother’s shoulder and reaches for her. Taking him from Maria’s arm, she adds, "I know they meant it as a comfort to him, but I think it made it worse."

"God, I can’t even imagine what he’s going through. If I lost Howard…"

It takes everything Peggy has not to scoff. She likes Maria, has liked Maria since Howard eloped with her four years earlier, but Maria is also half their age and hasn’t seen even a fraction of the things they have. And while Peggy has had a complicated relationship with Howard to say the very least, she’s also always been aware of and accepted who he is. Peggy doesn’t know if Maria is aware that Howard hasn’t let a little thing like marriage curtail his dating life, but she suspects if she does, she pretends she doesn’t.

"We play, Aunt Peggy?" Tony asks as they go inside the house.

She sighs. “Sure, buddy, let’s play.”

* * *

She is in the middle of helping Tony build an entire city of blocks when Howard appears at the door. Tony tries to show him what they’ve been doing, excitedly chattering about the details, but Howard only pats him on the head like a puppy before gesturing for Peggy to come with him.

"No, stay," Tony begs, grabbing at Peggy’s pant leg, and it makes her flinch when Howard snaps, "Tony, let her go!" and she sees Tony’s face fall.

Ignoring Howard, she bends and presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head. "I'll be back, sweetheart. Keep building, hmm?"

The moment they are in the hallway, Tony's bedroom door closed, she pins Howard with a glare. "You shouldn't be so harsh with him. He doesn't understand what's going on."

"Maria spoils him."

"He's _three_."

"I'll play with him later," Howard says with a wave of his hand, and Peggy knows it won't happen. "I'm worried about Jarvis. I don't know what to say to him."

"There's nothing _to_ say. He just...needs time."

"I've never seen anyone so destroyed." Howard scrubs at his face. "I feel useless."

"We are right now." She sighs. "He's lost the love of his life."

* * *

When the knock comes at her apartment door, Peggy has barely turned around before Victoria is bounding to the door, throwing it open even as Peggy tells her not to. But when she sees it is not an enemy agent but Jarvis standing on the threshold, disheveled and obviously inebriated, Peggy is just as surprised.

"Jarvis!" Victoria cries, flinging her arms around his legs. 

Jarvis manages a weak smile, running a hand over her dark head. "Good evening, Mistress Victoria. How are you?"

"We're having ice cream." Victoria takes his hand, leading him into the apartment. "Mum, can Jarvis have ice cream with us?"

"No, thank you," he says. "I was just - " He breaks off, his face clouded with emotion, before confessing, "I do not think I can stay at the manor this evening. There's too much of her still there. I was going to get a hotel room but I seem to have left my wallet there."

"You can stay with us!" Victoria offers, bouncing on her heels. "Addie's at college so you can sleep in her bed! We'll have a sleepover!"

Despite everything, Peggy cannot help but smile at the idea of Jarvis and Victoria having a sleepover, doing each other's hair and makeup while giggling about which boy they think is handsomest. "I'll stay in Addie's bed, and you can have mine." 

By the time she wrestles a sugared up Victoria into bed, certain putting her nine-year-old to sleep is more difficult than dismantling Hydra, Jarvis is seated on her couch, staring blankly at the television set. Peggy sits beside him, neither saying anything for a very long stretch of time. Finally in a voice so soft Peggy almost didn't hear him, Jarvis confesses, "I don't know if I can live without her. She was the only family I had left."

Peggy reaches for his hand, squeezing it hard. "That's not true. You have Howard and Maria and Tony, who would be absolutely lost without you. You have me and Addie and Victoria. Like it or not, Edwin Jarvis, you are the most stable man in my life, and I absolutely refuse to let you go anywhere."

A tear rolls down Jarvis's face as he admits, "I'm not sure I'm strong enough to do that."

"Then I'll be strong enough for the both of us."

He sleeps in her bed for four months before returning to the Stark estate, his heart healed enough to go back to the home he shared with Anna. The next time Peggy goes out to Long Island, he is Jarvis again, proper and helpful and completely devoted to Tony, but Peggy sees the sadness lingering in his eyes.

It is the same sadness she has seen in hers for over twenty years.


	9. New York, 1961

"Are you certain about this?"

Gabe looks at her with a wry smile, continuing to pack his bag. "Am I certain I want to stand up and fight for what's right? Isn't that we do?"

Blushing, Peggy says, "Of course. I just...People are getting killed down there."

"As I remember it, people got killed during the war too, but I still went." Closing his duffel, Gabe declares, "It's the right thing to do."

"I'm not arguing it isn't the right thing to do. Of course it is. It's brave and worthy and what's happening down there is wrong. But you didn't have a daughter when we marched into war."

"You march into war every day," Gabe snaps, the first hints of anger flushing his face, "and I keep my mouth shut about it. You do it because you think it's right, for some nonspecific idea of justice. This is real and it's important, to me and to Addie!"

"What's happening in the South has nothing to do with Addie!"

Gabe scoffs. "You can't be that naive, Peg. Our daughter is black. It doesn't matter you're from England or that your family's been there since the beginning of time. When the world looks at Addie, they see a black girl. You think because we moved back to the city it's better for her? You think any of those fancy private schools we've applied to are actually going to let her in? You'll never understand what life is like for us, Peggy, you just won't."

Chastened, Peggy sighs and admits, "Maybe I have been naive. I just don't want anything bad to happen to you down there."

Gabe smiles genuinely this time, a hint of the soldier she met almost twenty years earlier shining out. "I'm a Howling Commando, remember? I can take care of myself." He opens his arms and Peggy goes into them, embracing him tightly. Just as he always has, he rubs her back with his hand, and she realizes she forgot how comforting his hugs could be. "Sawyer is going with me. I won't be alone. And I'll come back."

"Gabe - "

He pulls away and cups her face. "I'll come back. God knows you could never handle Addie by yourself."

Peggy laughs, managing to suppress the wave of tears threatening to overwhelm her. "Well, then, I suppose I have no choice but to let you. And Addie and I will have a grand time while you're away."

"You're really okay with taking her the whole time? Because if you're not, Anita offered - "

"She's my daughter too, Gabe! I may not be the most hands-on mother, but I can handle it. I'm taking her and Victoria out to the Hamptons for a little holiday."

Something like a shadow falls over Gabe's face. "With Howard?"

Peggy scoffs. "No, of course not. Jarvis and Anna are going out to get the house ready for the summer, and they invited us to go along."

"Good old Jarvis."

Hearing the front door open, Anita's voice calling for Gabe, Peggy knows whatever moment they're having is over now. "I'll be around to collect Addie tomorrow."

* * *

Howard's house in East Hampton is right on the beach, as massive as his other homes and just as wasted on a single man. When they arrive, Addie actually gasps at the sight of it, and Jarvis dryly observes, "Yes, it is a big big."

"House," is all Victoria says before returning to sucking on her fingers.

"Is Mr. Stark the richest man in the world?" Addie asks later when she and Peggy walk along the water, the cold waves breaking against their feet.

Peggy looks up at the house, Anna standing on the porch with Victoria in her arms. She smiles at them, having Victoria wave, and Peggy gamely waves back. "No but one of the richest."

"Anita says he's a scoundrel."

Resisting the urge to share her unfiltered opinion of Addie's stepmother, Peggy instead allows, "Sometimes he is. Sometimes all people are. No one is wholly good or wholly bad."

"Captain America was. Right?" she adds, casting a sidelong look at Peggy. "Daddy came to school and talked about fighting with him in the war, and he said he was good."

"Yes, Captain America was good," Peggy agrees, heart aching as it always does when she thinks of that time. "But even Captain America wasn't always Captain America. When I met him, he was just Steve Rogers. And he was just a regular person like you or me."

"I bet Captain America would've gone with Daddy and the other riders to keep them safe."

Smiling, Peggy pulls Addie into her, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. "I think he would've been honored to do that. But I also think your daddy is very brave for going."

Addie nods with enthusiasm. "I wanted to go too, but he said I couldn't because it was too dangerous. When I'm bigger, I'm going to go."

"Hopefully when you're bigger you won't have to go because things will be better."

Looking out at the ocean, her young face suddenly looking far older than it should, Addie confesses, "I don't know if it's ever going to get better, Mommy. They hate us a lot."

When it comes to her daughters, it was Victoria Peggy worried about, terrified she'd grow up damaged with the realization that Howard wanted nothing to do with her. She'd thought Addie was safer, loved and adored by Gabe, always with the best marks in her class. How had she been so blind? 

"Then I suppose we'll just need to work to make the world better."

Addie looks up at her and smiles Gabe's smile. "Don't worry, Mommy. I will."

She watches as Addie starts running down the beach towards Jarvis and Anna, Victoria toddling on unsure feet, and Peggy wonders how she'll ever be able to thank Gabe for raising their daughter to be so wonderful.


	10. New York, 1959

He arrives after her other visitors have left, after official visiting hours are over. She suspects he charms the nurses, and Peggy knows better than anyone that Americans become strangely pliant when asked a question in their accents. Unlike Hal and Monica, he does not come bearing flowers. The teddybear Addie brought sits on her bedside table, the stuffed toy cradling a rose. When Addie was born, Gabe gave her a dozen roses, but she supposes a single rose is a kind enough gift from her ex-husband to celebrate the birth of another man's child.

Jarvis carries a neatly folded bundle, and after he removes his hat and coat, he extends it to her. "Anna wanted to come but she's ill with a terrible flu. She's been working on this for months though and wanted me to bring it."

It is a baby blanket of soft yellow, and Peggy smiles, adjusting the sleeping newborn in her arms. "That was kind of her, thank you."

He nods and smiles. "I hear you have another little girl."

"Quite little. She's so much smaller than Addie was. I was almost afraid when they handed her to me."

As he comes nearer the bed, he asks, "Have you named her yet?"

Peggy shakes her head. "I can't quite figure out what fits. Addie is named after Gabe's mother."

"You could name her after yours."

She snorts. "I think I'd rather not saddle her with the name of a woman who disowned me for marrying Gabe. What was your mother's name?"

"Gladys." Jarvis smiles wryly. "Perhaps you shouldn't saddler her with that either."

"She may just remain Baby Girl Carter then."

Jarvis winces. "Peggy - "

"If you offer an excuse for him right now, I will climb out of this bed and throw you out the window," Peggy vows.

"There is absolutely no excuse for what he's done." He sighs, coming to stand at her bedside to look upon her sleeping baby. "I have defended Mr. Stark through many of his misdeeds but even I have my limits."

"Well maybe if I'd had my limits, we wouldn't be here today."

"Yes but neither would she."

Peggy feels a lump rising in her throat and she blinks back tears. "Would you like to hold her?"

"Oh, I - I've never held a newborn before."

"If you've managed to not break any crystal, you'll be all right." 

Carefully handing the baby over to Jarvis, she watches as Jarvis looks on her daughter's tiny face in wonder, his hold more delicate than Peggy has ever seen him. She almost makes a joke about him being rougher with an unstable bomb than her daughter, but her emotions are getting the best of her. This pregnancy has been far more emotional than her first and apparently she isn't done yet.

"You'll watch out for her, right?" When Jarvis looks at her in confusion, Peggy rambles on, traitorous tears escaping her eyes, "If something should ever happen to me while I'm in the field, she'll need someone to watch out for her. Hal and Monica, they've agreed to keep her during the week while I work but...Should the worst happen, I'd want you and Anna - "

"You know I would," Jarvis cuts in, his voice soft as a whisper. 

They sit in silence for several minutes, Jarvis smiling down at the baby, before he ventures, "I always liked the name Victoria."

"Victoria," she repeats, wiping away a stray tear. "I like that."

She names her daughter Victoria Anna Carter and leaves the father's name blank.


	11. New York City, 1946

Despite turning him down multiple times, Howard sends a gown to The Griffith anyway along with a note telling her she needs to get out more. The last thing Peggy wants to do after a day of serving coffee and taking lunch order is to attend one of Howard's extravagant parties. But Angie is working a double and all of the men were such bastards to her, Peggy fingers herself putting on the gown and hailing a taxi uptown. 

"Pegs!" Howard cries when he sees her, slinging an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in to him. She can smell the bourbon on him already. "I knew I could get you here."

"How did you know my size?"

"I'm the best engineer in the world, pal." Dropping his hand from her shoulder to her waist, he gives her a squeeze. "And I've been studying you for a good, long time."

"If you think I won't break your arm at your own party, you are mistaken," she says over the fast paced music being played by the brass band.

Howard grins and presses a kiss to the hinge of her jaw. "You used to be more fun, Pegs."

As Howard moves to get her a drink, Peggy murmurs, "I know."

She doesn't know any of the society people at Howard's party, but she gamely dances with a few suitors, unable to keep from smiling each time Howard cuts in, putting a proprietary hand on her lower back. With the exception of Steve, any man who's approached her in Howard's presence since '41 has been on the receiving end of Howard's caveman routine, and Peggy wishes it bothered her more. But the truth is, most men are intimidated by Howard, and it makes it easier for her to keep unwanted advances at bay. 

"I have to get home," she tells Howard after a particularly bouncy dance that's left them both sweaty with exertion. 

"No, not yet!"

"I have a curfew."

"Ugh, Miriam is ruining my life," Howard groans with a laugh. "Hold on and I'll get Jarvis to drive you home."

"No, that's not - "

Howard waves away her as he goes off to fetch Jarvis, and if he kisses her a little too close to her mouth on the way out, Peggy doesn't complain. A little drunk on champagne, she lets Jarvis help her into the car and pretends she doesn't hear the silent judgment coming from her occasional partner in espionage.

When she enters the office the next morning, no one says a word to her, even Daniel, but the slight hangover she has from the champagne means she doesn't want much conversation anyway. It isn't until she returns from the restroom that she sees someone left a newspaper on her desk, opened and folded to a photograph of her and Howard laughing at something at his party. The headline stretched above it screams **Does Howard Stark Have a New Gal?**

"Bloody fucking hell," Peggy curses under her breath, folding the paper and dropping it in the bin.

Suddenly it's crystal clear why no one in the office is talking to her, even to tell her to file their paperwork or get them coffee, and if life wasn't terrible enough at the SSR before, it certainly is when Thompson sidles up behind her and growls into her ear, "This is why you'll never be one of us."

It is the nicest thing anyone says. She overhears the other agents talking about how she fucked her way into her job, how she bedded Captain America and Howard Stark and probably Colonel Phillips too, and by the end of the day, Peggy is as close to tears as she's ever been since the war ended.

When she's leaving for the day, Daniel gets into the elevator with her. She is silent for a moment before blurting out, "Do you hate me too now?"

Daniel blinks in surprise before managing, "No."

"What happened to Krzeminski wasn't Howard's fault, and I'm not bloody sleeping with him or anyone else."

He nods. "Okay then."

Exhaling sharply, she shakes her head. "I'm sorry. It's been a long day."

"Yeah." As the elevator doors open, Daniel offers, "They'll forget about it in a day or two."

Putting on her hat, Peggy shakes her head. "They won't but thank you for saying so."

As she walks back to The Griffith, Peggy wonders if this will ever get easier, if this is even worth it anymore.


	12. London, 1945

Phillips sends her home after Steve puts the plane down in the Arctic. He says she needs a break and despite her objections that they're in the middle of a _war_ and _everyone_ needs a break, he insists. Peggy takes her orders and catches a ride back to England, but she doesn't tell her family she's there. The idea of seeing her mother, Clarence, and even Hal is more than she can take. Peggy checks into a hotel and doesn't get out of bed for two days.

He arrives on the third day of her perpetual sleep, sweet talking one of the maids into letting him inside and giving her a hearty tip for it. Peggy barely rouses when she hears him calling her name, keeping her back to him. After a moment she hears shuffling and then the bed depresses as he climbs in with her, slipping beneath the covers as if he's done it a million times. She is likely the only woman Howard Stark has climbed into bed with fully clothed, and on any other day, she'd tease him for it. 

Howard touches her shoulder, curling his body behind hers, and when she doesn't protest, he drapes his arm over her and pulls her tight against him. The firm press of his arms around her is more comforting than Peggy thought it would be and she lets her eyes drift shut.

They both sleep another day.

On the fourth day of her mourning period, Peggy wakes up to find Howard tipping the uniformed boy who pushes a cart full of food. Judging by the cart's contents, Howard has ordered both breakfast and dinner items, and when he sees she's awake, Howard smiles.

"I wasn't sure what you'd be in the mood for so I've got eggs, bacon, toast, steak, potatoes, orange juice, coffee, and whiskey."

"How did you get all this?" she asks, voice hoarse from disuse.

"Money talks." He pushes the cart towards the bed. "So what'll it be?"

"Whiskey."

Howard clucks his tongue and shakes his head. "You got to eat something first."

"What are you, my mother?"

"Hell no. Your mother will never have an ass this good." 

Peggy laughs despite herself, the first time since the world ended, and she sighs, "The steak and potatoes."

"I love a girl with a hearty appetite," he declares, passing her the plate and silverware before climbing back on the bed with the breakfast food. 

"I've yet to meet a girl you haven't loved," she ribs, cutting the steak and popping a piece in her mouth. It is cooked to perfection, the best cut of meat she's had since the war started, and her empty stomach sings in relief.

"A man's got to have a hobby." 

Peggy watches him eat, devouring the eggs and toast without stopping to catch his breath, but he doesn't touch the bacon. When it's clear he has no intention of touching it, she points and asks, "You don't like it?"

Howard's cheeks turn a bit pink as he sets the plate on the bedside table. "Old habits die hard, I guess." 

"You have a habit for not eating bacon?"

"Pork."

It's funny how, in four years of knowing Howard, she'd thought she learned all of his secrets. He wasn't a subtle man by any means, and he couldn't hide his feelings a whit. But somehow, hearing him make this small confession felt enormous, as if he was trying to communicate to her that he understood just how much he's lost and how deep it cuts.

"Where were they from, your parents?"

"My father was from Germany, and my mother's family was from Budapest. They were the only ones in their families to come over." He tries to smile but it's more a grimace. "Now it's just me, the last Stark."

Passing her plate to him so he can set it on the table, she confesses, "My father killed himself. He fought in the war, and he came back...damaged. I don't really remember him. My mother married Clarence when she was still pregnant with Hal. We all pretend he died of some ailment." She offers her own grimace. "Hal and I are the last Carters."

"Then I guess we got to live, pal, because the world needs more of us."

Tears filling her eyes, Peggy nods. "I suppose so."

They check out of the hotel the next morning, Howard flying her back to the front. Her heart is still an open sore, her grief at losing Steve gnawing at her, but her place is here with Steve's men. _Her_ men now, and she tells Phillips that with the 107th at her back to offer support.

She will survive this war. She will survive losing Steve. There is no other option.


	13. Martha's Vineyard, 1976

It is splashed across every tabloid and gossip column, the pictures snapped by an enterprising photographer hiding in the bushes showing Howard Stark romancing a very young woman who is certainly not Maria Stark. Everywhere Peggy looks, there he is, disappointing in his predictability, and she would've thought after all these years he'd be better at carrying on his affairs. Discretion is required for adultery, and while she'd never accuse Howard of being discreet, she would never describe him as cruel. But carrying on with a girl younger than Addie, stumbling out of Studio 54 like a still-young playboy rather than the middle-aged husband and father he is, humiliating Maria in front of the entire world....Well, Peggy cannot think it anything _but_ cruel.

"He's such an idiot," Addie declares when she comes over for Sunday breakfast, Peggy's infant granddaughter Annalise dozing in her arms. "What was he thinking?"

"I don't think the blood was in his brain," Victoria quips as she pours them all glasses of orange juice, and though Peggy's never confirmed Victoria's paternity to her, she knows her daughter is smart enough to have deduced it. After all, the only three men Victoria ever saw her with were Howard, Jarvis, and Gabe, and both Gabe and Jarvis both politely denied it when Victoria asked them. Victoria never said a word to Howard about it, though Peggy always made certain they had limited contact. But that didn't stop Victoria from developing an opinion about him.

"Victoria, please."

"What? It's true! He's a dirty old man." Taking a bite of her toast, she adds, "But I feel bad for Tony."

"So do I," Addie agrees as Peggy passes her Annalise's bottle. "I can't imagine what it's like in that house right now. Even Jarvis can't shield him entirely from it. Thank god it's summer vacation so the kids at school can't say anything."

"Could Tony come with us on vacation?" When Peggy looks at Victoria in surprise, her younger daughter rushes on, "At least he'll get away from everything and won't have to hear them fighting. Or, you know, be there when Aunt Maria files for divorce."

Peggy can't quite control the way her lips twitch towards a smile. Howard has never been that involved in either of her girls' lives - hell, he's barely been involved in Tony's - but Maria with her relentlessly cheery disposition and love of children had doted on them, showering them with gifts and taking them out to lunch whenever she came into the city. Victoria especially loved Howard's wife, and Maria, who'd never been able to carry another child after Tony, loved Howard's daughter more than Peggy ever thought possible. 

"It would be nice," Peggy concedes, "but unfortunately I haven't been able to get ahold of Maria."

It is an understatement. On several occasions she'd called only to have Jarvis tell her it was not an ideal time, shouting echoing in the background.

"I'll call her," Victoria declares before asking Addie about Andrew and their new apartment in Virginia and why they couldn't move back to New York.

Maria calls her three days later to thank her for offering to let Tony come on their vacation and how happy she was Tony could get out of the city for awhile. Peggy steals a look over at Victoria, splayed across the couch with her dark hair piled atop her head, and smiles, giving Maria the particulars of when she and Victoria will be 'round to collect him. It will be the first time Tony's ever traveled away from home without her or Jarvis, Maria explains, and he's been moody. When she asks Peggy if she's sure she'll be able to handle it, she laughs out right. After Victoria's more trying years, a sulky pre-teen with too much intelligence will be no struggle at all.

It is uncomfortably hot and unbearably humid when Peggy and Victoria drive to collect Tony. The cool blast of the air conditioning inside the building housing the Stark penthouse is a sweet reprieve, and as they ride the elevator upwards, Victoria pushes her sunglasses onto her head and asks, "Can we just stay in the air conditioning?"

Jarvis answers the door as he always has, smiling when Victoria flings herself into his arms and squeezes him as tight as she can. Her feet dangle above the floor for a minute before Jarvis replaces her on the ground, and she wrinkles her nose in irritation when Jarvis eyes her belly baring shirt with disapproval. Peggy had done the same thing this morning, but rather than a nose wrinkle, she'd received an earful of profanity and complaints that she was leaving for college in a month and wasn't a child.

Apparently the double standard of treatment between mother and father figure is alive and well.

"How are things?" Peggy murmurs when she and Jarvis embrace.

"Tense," is all Jarvis can manage before Maria appears, a somber looking Tony trailing after her like he is being marched to his own execution.

"Tori!" Maria cries, enveloping Victoria in a hug, and Peggy bites her lip when she sees Jarvis's lips twitch into a brief frown. Much like their shared disapproval of Victoria's clothing, Maria's nickname for her daughter has never caught on with them. "I swear, you get more beautiful every time I see you."

"Yeah, well," she laughs with a playful shrug. Looking around Maria, she holds up her hand in greeting. "Hey, Tone."

"Hi," he grunts before returning his gaze to his sneakers.

"You guys are going to have so much fun on Martha's Vineyard," Maria announces with the same false happiness Peggy recognizes from the last days of Hal and Monica's marriage. "I'm jealous. I wish I could go."

"You can," Tony mumbles, lifting his dark eyes towards her. "You don't have to stay."

Peggy understands at once her godson is talking about far more than going on holiday, and she curses Howard Stark with every fiber of her being for putting his son through this.

Maria's happy facade cracks for only a moment, but it is long enough for Victoria to see it too. She steals a look at Peggy before asking, "We should get going, right, Mum? Beat the traffic?"

"Right," Peggy agrees. 

Tony seems resistant to the false cheer his mother is peddling, but he still hugs her with ferocity. Peggy's often thought no son has ever loved his mother more than Tony Stark, and Peggy cannot say she blames him. Howard has never shown him much kindness, has never attended a school function or seen Tony place in a state science fair. Much like all the other responsibilities of life he didn't want to deal with, Howard passed it on to Jarvis or Maria or Peggy herself.

They are halfway to Massachusetts before Victoria is able to lure Tony from beneath his black cloud with talk of some scientific discovery Peggy didn't understand and music so atrocious, Peggy wished to be struck deaf. As intelligent as Howard's children might be, neither possessed any gift for singing, but they tried to replace skill for vigor. By the time they'd reached the ferry that would carry them to the island, Victoria and Tony were thick as thieves as they usually were, the six year age difference between them all but disappeared.

The house Peggy rented to celebrate the country's bicentennial is small and smells vaguely of mildew, nothing like the grand vacation homes Tony is used to, but the loft that is barely big enough to sit up in fascinates him at once, his lanky body scurrying up the ladder before Victoria can claim it for herself. There is no phone in the house, which is why Peggy rented it in the first place, and no television either. This will be the last holiday before Victoria leaves home, packs her bags and heads off to California to study architecture and begin her own life just as Addie has. Peggy Carter is staring down retirement, her 56-year-old body feeling twice as old after so many years in the field, her eldest daughter is married with a child, and her youngest is about to leave the nest. This feels like the beginning of the end, and Peggy wanted absolute peace.

Tony deserves that too. 

They got into town for dinner before the kids buy tickets for the carousel. Peggy watches them go round, both of them laughing, and it is obvious to anyone who looks that they are brother and sister. Victoria hooks her arm around Tony's shoulders as they get off, a move Peggy recognizes from when she and Hal were children, and a lump rises in her throat. She hasn't seen much of Hal since he left Monica, left his children, to run off with his secretary like some terrible cliche. Monica still lives in the house in Westchester with Charlie and Candice, the little girl they adopted after him, but she'd sent Victoria back to Peggy the year of the divorce, too frazzled to deal with the fiery, angry changeling that replaced the girl she'd raised.

Both Victoria and Tony sleep in the loft the first night, Peggy listening to them giggle and whisper into the night, and she knows as much as she appreciates it, Howard never will.

She's woke at dawn her entire adult life, and being on holiday doesn't change that. Peggy makes herself a cup of tea and sits on the small back porch of house, sipping and enjoying the shush of the ocean in the distance. When Victoria stumbles out to join her, Peggy passes her the cup and she takes a sip.

"Thank you," Victoria says after several quiet minutes together.

"For what?"

"For never marrying him."

Peggy rolls her head to look at Victoria, and her daughter meets her gaze with Howard's eyes. "What?"

"Thank you for making sure he was never my father." 

Passing the mug of tea back to her, Peggy just nods, unsure what to say.

She's afraid Victoria's said everything there is.

Tony joins them an hour later, mumbling, "Hey, Aunt Peggy," while rubbing at his eyes, and the three of them greet the day together.


	14. New York City, 1965

Jarvis calls her to tell her the joyous news, as buoyant with happiness as if Maria Stark just gave birth to his own child.

"It's a boy," he tells her, and Peggy swears she can hear the grin on his face. "Anthony Edward Stark. Eight pounds, seven ounces, 21 inches long, and perfectly healthy."

Peggy smiles. "You must give Howard and Maria my congratulations."

"I will, of course." 

He gives her a bit more information about Howard's son before letting her go, and Peggy feels a strange sadness settle over her as she replaces the receiver in the cradle. She really _is_ happy for Maria, who has been so anxious to meet her child. She's even happy for Howard. But even though she thought she'd forgiven him years ago, Peggy cannot forget being alone in the hospital six years before, bringing Victoria into the world alone while Howard hid across the country.

She pours herself a glass of wine to review the files for the SHIELD debriefing in the morning.

Peggy has almost nodded off on her couch when someone knocks at the door. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, Peggy instinctively reaches for the sidearm she keeps near the door before checking the peephole. Instead of a rogue enemy agent, all she sees Howard, clearly inebriated, a cigar clenched between his teeth.

With a sigh, Peggy unchains the door, turns the deadbolt, and lets Howard inside.

"Hiya, pal," he says with a liquid smile, handing her an unopened cigar with **It's a Boy!** written on the wrapping in blue ink.

"Congratulations," she offers in reply, setting the cigar on the kitchen table along with her gun. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Time for me to visit my best friend," he counters, dropping onto her couch and picking up her glass of wine. He throws it back like a shot, and Peggy sighs. There is no way she's getting Howard out of her apartment tonight with Jarvis throwing him over his shoulder. It certainly wouldn't be the first time, but it _is_ the first since his elopement with Maria.

He looks at her, his vision obviously blurred, as she bends down in front of him. Peggy pulls off his shoes, dropping them near the coffee table and then helps wrestle him out of his coat. He has a crooked tie around his neck, a leftover from work today before rushing to Maria's bedside, and Peggy removes that too. By the time she gets him down to his undershirt and boxers, she is sweating from the effort, and Howard is on the brink of unconsciousness. Peggy takes the cigar from his mouth, putting it out on the saucer she'd left on the end table this morning, and then wraps her hands around his wrists, heaving him onto his feet.

"I'm a daddy, Peggy," he slurs as she leads him into her bedroom, trying her best to keep him upright while pulling the bedclothes down. 

"Yes, Howard, I'm aware," she grunts, dropping him against the pillows. Shoving his legs beneath the sheet, pulling the comforter up to his chin like she would Addie or Victoria if they slept in her bed, she threatens, "If you vomit in my bed, I will beat you."

She undresses in the girls' room, curling up on Addie's bed to sleep. Peggy is unsure how long she's been asleep when she hears Howard stumbling around in the living room, and she heaves herself to her feet, prepared to murder him. This behavior had been inconvenient when they were in their twenties and irritating in their thirties, but now that they were in their forties, it was just pathetic.

Howard stands in front of her open refrigerator, drinking juice straight from the bottle. With only the meager light from the kitchen window, Peggy notices for the first time how much Howard has aged in the past few years. His hair is full of silver now, the compact, lightly muscled body giving way to softness. Peggy knows she is past her prime as well. Two children, too much time spent behind a desk, and a knee injury the year before has lead to her having to get used to a body she doesn't recognize either. 

_We're getting old_ , she thinks as Howard turns around and looks at her with bleary eyes. And then she thinks, _At least we've had the chance._ Not like Steve or Bucky or any of the dozen men they've buried in the past twenty years. 

"I'm sorry," Howard rasps.

"I know."

He stumbles and Peggy is there, bracing him up and helping him back to her room. As he gets into bed, Howard catches her wrist, tugging her down to join him, and she scoffs. "Do you honestly think I'm going to sleep with you the night your son was born?"

"No, I don't want - I don't want that. I just...don't want to be alone."

Peggy knows it's not okay, but she's been alone for so long now. As she climbs into bed beside him, keeping a careful distance between their bodies, she momentarily longs for the days when there wasn't a moment's hesitation in sharing a bed with Howard Stark.

"Pegs?" he whispers just as she is on the cusp of sleep.

"What?" she responds without opening her eyes.

"Will you tell me about our girl?"

Her eyes pop open, surprised. In six years Howard's never directly referenced Victoria, and she's never tried to make him part of her life since that disastrous first birthday party. But as she looks at him now, drunk and sad in her bed, Peggy finds herself full of pity he doesn't deserve.

"She's intelligent," Peggy begins, sorting through all the hundreds of things that spring to mind about her youngest daughter, "and thoughtful. She has a dry sense of humor. She's far more adventurous than Addie; she'll climb any tree or jump from any height. She has a terrible temper, which...I suppose is no surprise given our own temperaments."

Howard manages a weak smile. "No, probably not."

"She looks just like you."

"So does the baby." Howard shakes his head. "I'm not cut out to be a dad, Pegs. Guys like Gabe and Jarvis, they - they can do it. But I'm not a good man."

"You can be. I've seen it." Taking his hand and squeezing it tight, she swears, "I wouldn't have had Victoria if you weren't."

"But you wouldn't marry me." He swallows a lump in his throat. "I asked you a dozen times and you always said no."

"Maybe you weren't the only one not cut out for marriage and being a parent."

Howard rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. His voice so soft, Peggy almost doesn't hear him, he declares, "I don't deserve you or Maria or either of those kids."

"But you have us, so you need to make it right."

When Peggy wakes up the next morning, Howard is gone, and there is an article in the paper about the Stark prince being born, complete with a photo of the smiling new family.

Peggy calls off work, skips the debriefing, and catches the train to Westchester, picking up Victoria from morning kindergarten. She spoils her terribly, and, as they are eating their ice cream cones in the park, Peggy looks at Howard's daughter and wonders how he can be so disinterested in the beautiful person they created.

"What's wrong, Mum?" Victoria asks, taking a long lick of her chocolate cone.

Peggy smiles, kissing the top of her head. "Nothing, love. Just daydreaming."

She waits until Howard is away on business before visiting Maria and baby Anthony, bringing Addie and Victoria with her. Both of her girls fawn over the baby, begging to hold him, and as Maria sets Anthony in Victoria's arms, Addie beside her to help support Anthony's head, Maria leans over to Peggy and whispers, "We'll make sure they grow up knowing each other, right, Peg?"

Peggy isn't sure how it's happened but somehow the Stark Peggy is raising her daughter alongside is Maria.


	15. Washington DC, 1985

Retirement does not suit Peggy. She knows it is necessary, especially after two knee replacements and the mild "cardiac event" from the year before but it is frustrating. Unlike other women her age, Peggy does not want to play bingo, take up knitting, or spend hours at coffee shops; what she wants to do is be useful, and she doesn't feel useful anymore.

And then Andrew hits a patch of black ice driving home from work one night, dying instantly when his car slams into a tree, and Addie is left with three young children to raise on her own.

"Please help me," Addie begs when Peggy takes the train down for Andrew's funeral, and so Peggy sells the apartment she's lived in for over thirty years and moves into the basement of Addie's house.

Annalise, Antoine, and little Ava are strangers to Peggy. She loves her grandchildren just as she's loved her daughters but she's never spent any extended time with them. Gabe is the one they adore, the one they would've preferred move in, but Peggy throws herself into winning them over while Addie works long hours at the VA. It takes almost a year before they settle into a comfortable rhythm, and while running Annalise to ballet or helping Antoine learn to spell his name isn't as exciting as protecting the world, at least it gives her a purpose.

When Victoria comes for Christmas, Peggy knows something is wrong. They eat the meal Addie makes, watch the kids tear into their presents, and sit through Midnight Mass. It isn't Addie and the children are asleep that Peggy asks Victoria point blank what's going on, her youngest blinking in surprise with her toothbrush in her mouth.

Then she removes the toothbrush, spits into the sink, and announces, "I'm pregnant."

The father is a one-night stand, Victoria explains, playing with the ends of her hair just as she had when she was a child and afraid of getting into trouble. She scheduled an appointment for an abortion but didn't go; she has another one scheduled for when she gets back to California. Peggy reads the indecision all over her, which is why she says, "Whatever you do, I'll support you."

Victoria looks at her with Howard's eyes and asks, "If you could've made the choice with me, would you have?"

Peggy smiles mirthlessly. "Do you honestly think if I hadn't wanted you that I couldn't have found a doctor to do it?"

Victoria lays down, resting her head in Peggy's lap. As Peggy cards her fingers through her hair, she murmurs, "Why _did_ you have me?"

"Because you are the best thing Howard and I ever created together." She sighs. "And because I was almost forty and I thought maybe I got pregnant then for a reason. I didn't always do well by you or by Addie, but I tried to love you the best I could."

"Tony thinks the Starks are meant to be parents."

Peggy guides Victoria's chin until her daughter is looking up at her. "Then I guess it's a good thing you're a Carter, isn't it?"

The house can't hold another person, and so Peggy uses some of her savings to purchase a townhouse. Victoria moves into one of the spare rooms, applying to firms in the city while Peggy continues to babysit Addie's children during the day. As Victoria's stomach grows, so, too, does Peggy's concerns for her daughter. She knows she isn't alone when one evening, as Addie walks Ava around the floor, her youngest screeching with an earache, Addie announces, "Tori isn't ready for this."

Peggy has never attended the birth of a grandchild before and she scarcely remembers her own daughters' births thanks to the twilight sleep. She holds Victoria's hand as she screams and wails through twenty hours of labor, cursing a streak so blue that the Howling Commandos themselves would have blushed. 

And then the doctor declares, "It's a girl!" 

Sharon Margaret Carter looks nothing like Victoria with her blonde hair and gray eyes. Victoria keeps looking at the baby as if she cannot believe she is real, and Peggy remembers that feeling. The first time she held Addie, she couldn't believe something so perfect came from her. It puts Peggy's heart at ease, witnessing Victoria experience the initial awe of motherhood.

"I'll protect her," Antoine promises Peggy solemnly when she lifts him up to see his newborn cousin sleeping in the nursery, "just like Anna and Ava. I can be her big brother too, can't I, Gran?"

He is so much like Gabe, it makes Peggy's heart swell with love, and she kisses the top of his head. "Absolutely, my love."

Two weeks after Sharon's birth, Peggy notices something is wrong. When Sharon cries, Victoria isn't swift to respond. She often catches Victoria staring into space, her hair dirty and eyes lifeless, and when Peggy gently prompts her, Victoria looks at her with such confusion, it startles Peggy.

"Baby blues," Victoria's doctor dismisses, advising her to get some sunlight and exercise. Victoria starts going on walks around the neighborhood in the afternoon, but her mood doesn't seem to improve.

Peggy stops waiting for Victoria to wake with Sharon, moving the baby monitor into her bedroom.

"Could you take Sharon to her well baby check-up?" Victoria asks Peggy four months after Sharon's birth as she pours coffee into her travel mug. "I have this big meeting this afternoon I cannot miss."

Peggy nods. "Of course. Will you be home for supper?"

"Sure," she answers, walking over to brush a kiss against Sharon's head before rushing out the door.

Peggy takes Sharon to her appointment, trying to keep Ava distracted with a book while the doctor checks on everything. By the time they're done, she picks Antoine up from kindergarten and takes all the children back to Addie's to await Annalise's arrival on the school bus. Peggy is exhausted by the time Addie gets home, and she decides she'll make Victoria bathe Sharon tonight so she can rest. She is almost sixty-five-years-old; she is too old to be tending an infant full-time.

The townhouse is dark when Peggy gets home, Sharon asleep in her carrier. As Peggy turns on the lights, she notices an envelope on the mantle with **Mum** written across it in Victoria's block print. Setting Sharon down, she picks it up, slipping her finger beneath the flap and removing a single sheet of paper torn from a notepad.

_I can't do it. Please don't hate me. Make Sharon understand some day, okay? It's better this way._

It's been a very long time since Peggy found herself stunned, but this qualifies.

It takes two phone calls to Nick Fury to locate Victoria in San Francisco, picking up her life as if she never left. Peggy buys a ticket twice to go out there and tear her a new one for leaving Sharon behind but each time she stops herself, usually with Addie's reasoned interventions. Peggy doesn't understand it. She knows she was not always the best mother to either of her girls but she never abandoned them, never disappeared and washed her hands of the responsibility.

"This isn't your fault," Addie tells her two months after Victoria's disappearance. 

"Isn't it?"

"No," Addie stressed. "Look, I know you never wanted to see it, but Tori's been messed up for a long time. She shouldn't have had Sharon."

"Don't say that."

Addie scoffs. "Mom, I love you, but when are you going to face the fact that Tori isn't a kid anymore? She's 26-years-old and she made a choice. You cleaning up after her is no different that Jarvis cleaning up after Howard or Tony. I love Sharon, she's my niece, and I'll do whatever I can for her, but what Victoria did? It's not okay and I'm not going to excuse it."

Maria comes to visit bearing so many pink gifts, Peggy is certain she bought out the entire store. As she coos and smiles into Sharon's giggling face, she looks at Peggy and offers, "If she'll be too much for you, I would be happy to take care of her."

"What?"

Blushing lightly, Maria continues, "I just meant that - I'm not quite fifty yet. I have the energy and the time, and I can afford the help. And...well, Sharon's my granddaughter too, isn't she?"

Peggy loves Maria, considers her one of her closest friends, but possessive anger roars in her chest. In a clipped, polite voice, she says, "Thank you, Maria, but I can manage just fine, thank you. If you'd like to help, I suggest looking up Victoria."

After Maria leaves, Peggy looks at Sharon, bouncing on her stomach on her blanket. As she bends to pick her up, Sharon grins at her with the two bottom teeth she's just recently cut and Peggy melts.

"Well," she says, holding her granddaughter against her, "I suppose it's just you and me now."

They would not see Victoria again for six years.


End file.
